Bah humbug commercial radio, hurrah for Internet radio

by Carla Schroder

Kids these days, with their lo-fi iTunes and iPods and ringtones (that they pay money for!!) and mp3 collections. Why, I remember the early days of the Diamond Rio, one of the first portable digital music players, and even then I stuck my nose in the air and scoffed. If I want to listen to horrid low-quality low-fidelity tunes, I said to myself, I'll go fire up the 8-track in my antique Datsun. Lossy formats and crappy little tiny speakers, bah.

I'm still not into lo-fi music players, or trying to make my poor little PC do everything in the world. I have all these nice electronics in my living room for playing music and movies with good-quality sound and video. But there is one newfangled method of delivering music that I have come to like a lot- Internet radio. (I know it's not radio, but since we still dial our touch-tone phones, I am comfortable with saying "Internet radio.")

Broadcast radio long ago ceased to be interesting or relevant. Or, to put it in terms suitable for us cranky old audiophiles, it became a poo-ridden wasteland. I swear if I hear "Stairway to Heaven" one more time I'm going to go nukular. Nothing ruins a good song like playing it to death, then flogging its poor little corpse to the end of time.

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